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Sunday, November 27, 2005

Featured Book: REAL MAGIC

I was blessed with having mentors in my life. Had it not been for their time and patience I never would have known the value of creating options for myself, as well as seeking alternative paths in the pursuit of a more fulfilling career and personal life. And so, when I had acquired some years and wisdom, in reciprocity, I engaged in mentoring.For the most part, I would stress the importance of spirituality in one’s life; not so much religiosity, but rather an inner knowing of one’s connectivity with others and the universe. I did this by recommending a study of a martial art and the book, Zen in the Art of Archery. Learning martial arts, by the way, also hones one’s ability to focus in spite of tumultuous factors that may surround him. Almost in all cases, the topic of cultivating financial security from one’s career would arise. New York has a glut of financial wiz and planners who offer guidance, as well as a number of respectable graduate schools to acquire appropriate credentials from in order to enhance one’s resume and earning power. Either one should be able to address the issue. However, there are other more affordable alternatives such as Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, Real Magic, and another I had previously featured, As a Man Thinket by James Allen.In Real Magic, Dr. Dyer basically points out that everything we need to acquire prosperity has always been within us, but we must first eliminate the hindrance—the scarcity consciousness—which prevents us from experiencing abundance in our life. He illustrates this principle with the following story:A man who was ragged and appeared to be without anything in a physical sense came upon a road boss and said, “Can you help me? I need work.” The road boss said, “Fine, take that large boulder over there and roll it up and down the hill. If you need work that will fulfill your need.”The man said, “You don’t understand, what I really need is money.The boss replied, “Oh, if it is only money that you need, here is fifty dollars. But you cannot spend it.”Again, the man was perplexed. “You don’t understand, what I really need is food and fuel and clothing, not just money.”The boss again replied, “If you are sure that this is really what you need, then spend the money for food, fuel and clothing, but don’t eat the food, or burn the fuel or wear the clothing.”The man was finally forced to look at what he really needed, which was a sense of security, peace and inner satisfaction. All totally invisible, all within the mind. All divine sustenance.The author further claims, “What you need, you already have, and when you know it, and go within and create it in your mind, the divine sustenance you seek in the form of material things or money will be manifested in whatever amounts needed.”That whenever we say to ourselves, “I don’t have enough money,” “The economy is bad these days,” “I don’t have the appropriate educational background,” or, “I didn’t come from the right family and therefore, will never get the promotion and earn the money I want,” we are operating in our mental world from a position of lack or the underprivileged. Therefore, we deprive our own self the opportunity of going into the world of real magic; hence unable to experience a life of prosperity and abundance. Dr. Dwayne Dyer also mentions of the time he was accused of having a cavalier attitude toward the poor by a radio talk show host when he was a guest on his program. Dr. Dyer’s contention was that being broke is a temporary state of affairs that afflicts everyone at some point in life, but being poor is an attitude, a set of beliefs that gets reinforced when we shift to blaming life circumstances for the condition of poverty.One of the incoming calls in response to this radio conversation was from a physician in Washington, D.C., who had grown up in a family of thirteen children in appalling poverty in Jamaica. He disagreed with the host, saying:I lived in dirt-poor conditions all of my life. I mean hungry, starving poverty. But I always had a vision of myself as a doctor. I could not lose that vision, and I would always tell my grandmother about that picture in my head. She was raising all of us on practically no income, and she always told me to never, but never, let the picture become blurred. She told me about the value of that inner picture, and that I always kept it, and believed in it, I would only have that picture to act upon.As I got older and finished high school, I applied to several schools in premed curricula, and I was rejected over and over again, but I could not shake that picture that my grandmother helped me to have as a ragtag little boy playing with the chickens in our little hut in Jamaica. Finally I was given a conditional opportunity to enroll in a premed program in Europe, and I worked my way there and through school.Today I am a physician with a thriving practice. Without that vision, without that invisible picture in mind, I could never have escaped the life of poverty that continues today for most of my brothers and sisters and all of my friends there. They live in poverty and believe that life dealt them a stacked deck, and that I was lucky. But I know better. I am living the life I pictured for myself.And Dr. Dyer, don’t you ever let anyone dissuade you from telling the truths that you know, because you are doing much more to help those in horrible circumstances than those who buy the big lie that their lives are beyond their own control.Dr. Dyer asks his readers to suspend any erroneous beliefs that these truths apply exclusively to him, the doctor in Washington, D.C. and to a chosen few, but has nothing to do with any of us. In actuality, it has everything to do with all of us.He argues that these truths transcend individual lives because it involves universal laws and principles that were here long before we all showed up in our physical form. He’s simply reporting on what he knows to be true for his own self and many others. That if you want to experience prosperity in a miraculous level, he suggests that you must leave behind your old ways of thinking and develop a new way of imagining what is possible for you to experience in your life.The old tried and true adage supports Dr. Wayne Dyer's principle: Thoughts manifest themselves.Ask and you shall receive, applies as well.

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Life in Manila as observed by a former New Yorker who with a laptop and camera has reinvented himself as a storyteller. Winner of the PHILIPPINE BLOG AWARDS: Best Photo Blog in 2007 and three Best Single Post awards in 2008.